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Reported 1000% increase in Bedbug Infestations...!

Recent news articles about Bedbug Infestations show how wide spread the problem is now becoming including the financial losses and damage to brand reputation it can cause if it is not effectively treated.

London Hotel Sued Over Bedbug Attack  (The Metro - 16 January 2007) 

• A New York lawyer is suing a luxury London hotel after he and his wife were bitten by bed bugs.
• Sidney Bluming and his wife, Cynthia, are seeking several million dollars in damages from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group Limited in the lawsuit which was filed last month in the US District Court, Manhattan.
• The couple claim they suffered hundreds of bites that left their skin red, swollen and itchy during a five-day stay at the luxury Hyde Park hotel in May last year.
  They also say that after their stay in the capital the bugs embedded themselves in their luggage, hitching a transatlantic ride to their own Manhattan apartment and infested there as well.
• He said: 'People associate bed bugs with more of a lower end class of hotel.
  'Clearly, that is not the case here. The Mandarin is as premier and luxurious as any hotel could make themselves out to be.'
  The lawsuit accuses the hotel chain of fraud, deceptive trade practice, negligence, recklessness, intentional infliction of emotional distress and nuisance.

Magnolia Director in Bedbug Case  (BBC News - 3 November 2006)

• Film director Paul Anderson, is suing the owner of his New York apartment over an infestation of bed bugs.
• The director and his wife, comedienne Maya Rudolph, were "bitten all over their bodies" after moving into the flat last month, court papers claim.
  An exterminator later told them to move out, at least for a few weeks, for the sake of their one-year-old baby.
• Anderson is seeking $450,500 (£235,800) in damages in the case, which also names his estate agent as a defendant.

Mind the Bedbugs Don't Bite as Numbers Boom  (This is London - 19 October 2006)

• Be warned - next time you return from a foreign jaunt, you might have brought back an very unwelcome souvenir.
• Experts say cases of bedbugs have shot up in the past decade, and believe the rise in trips to far-flung countries may be to blame.
• They believe the parasites are stowing away in our luggage and then making their home in crevices under our furniture, beneath carpets and even in picture frames.
• Once there a single female can lay up to three eggs a day, quickly creating an infestation.
• Although the bugs weigh about the same as a grain of rice, they can guzzle four times their own body weight in just 15 minutes, leaving their poor victim covered in itchy red blotches.

Bedbugs Bite as Infestations Increase  (Norwich Evening News 24)

• Outbreaks of bed bugs in Norwich have increased by almost 50pc in the past year and our love of foreign travel and car boot sales could be to blame.......
• Elizabeth Kidman is a senior entomologist at the Medical Entomology Centre in Cambridge and has studied them in her labs. She confirmed incidents of bed bugs were steadily increasing.
• "The thing is, a lot of people think they live in beds but they do not. They live in furniture close to beds," she said.
• "They exist there and come out to feed on you at night when you are asleep. You are their blood meal.
• "Bed bugs can give you a nasty bite but they do not transmit disease. The only time you would end up in hospital is if you had a severe reaction."

Seven-year Itch Proves Bedbugs are Biting Back  (Daily Telegraph) 

• Bed bugs, for years linked to insanitary households, poverty and the darker side of Dickens, are making a comeback. Infestations of the bugs, which feast on human blood and leave itchy weals on the skin, had been virtually eliminated in prosperous countries but have had a resurgence in the last seven years.
• In America, wealthy householders have been horrified to discover that the cause of their bites, often on the arms and shoulders, had been bed bugs. Australia has also reported a recent "dramatic" increase.
• Clive Bose, a pest management specialist, told the Institute of Biology's journal, Biologist, yesterday: "Data from some sources indicate that since the mid-1990s the numbers of reported infestations have almost doubled annually, although numbers are nowhere near pre-war levels."

Bedbugs Bite £43m Hole in Australia's Tourist Income  (The Scotsman 4 Febuary 2006)

• AUSTRALIA is suffering a bed-bug epidemic with the tourism industry losing an estimated £43 million a year because of the blood-sucking insects.
• Some pest controllers have reported more than a 1,000 per cent rise in bed-bug outbreaks, said the Institute for Clinical Pathology & Medical Research at Sydney's Westmead Hospital.
• The Australian outbreaks are part of a global epidemic, with the number of bed bugs worldwide doubling each year, says entomologist Stephen Doggett.
• "Britain, Europe and a lot of America have reported a resurgence in bed bugs," he added.
• Hotel and pest control operators in the United States reported a 20 per cent rise in bed bugs in 2004 and bed-bug infestations there have caused lawsuits, with a number of companies sued by guests who have been bitten.
• Mr Doggett said the worldwide rise in the insects was a result of changing pest control measures and an increase in travellers visiting exotic locations.